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Teacher Support
Access to Lower Ability Support Packs
Useful
Websites for the Geography Teacher
Websites for exam boards in the
UK
Topical websites - news sites
Statistical websites
Satellite image websites
Using ICT in Key Stage 3
Geography
Key Geography Newsletters
New Key Geography Connections Teacher's Resource weblinks
New Key Geography Interactions Teacher's Resource weblinks
• Useful Websites
for the Geography Teacher
The
government and other organisations such as QCA and BECTa
are committed to developing guidance and resources for
education using the internet. NoF training has clearly
demonstrated the important role ICT has to play in helping
teachers to plan and resource their curriculum and embrace
new ideas. This section suggests some key websites that
are useful to geography departments to assist their curriculum
planning and integration of ICT into department management
and teaching approaches. This list will be updated as
additional sites of relevance to geography teaching become
available. If you know of useful sites which are not included
on this list, please e-mail the details to us using the
contact details provided below.
National
Curriculum
http://www.nc.uk.net/
Weblinks have been developed for every aspect of the Key
Stage 3 programme of study, as well as online exemplification
materials for national curriculum levels.
National
Curriculum in Action
http://www.ncaction.org.uk/
This website uses pupils’ work and case study material
to show what the National Curriculum looks like in practice.
The teacher can select a NC level for geography and download
an example of pupils’ work with a teacher commentary
outlining the unit of work. Guidance is also provided
on the site about progression in Geography and how to
make a level judgement at the end of the key stage.
Virtual
Teacher Centre – ICT in the Curriculum
http://curriculum.becta.org.uk/
The Geography section includes exemplification of using
ICT in Geography at Key Stage 3 with a number of case
studies from schools about how they integrate the use
of ICT into different study units. These case studies
include teaching and learning resources that can be downloaded
for use in the classroom. There is also an excellent introduction
to Geographic Information Systems, with ideas about how
this technology can be fully utilised in the classroom.
Virtual
Teachers Centre VTC
http://vtc.ngfl.gov.uk/
This teacher website has an ever-growing collection of
reviews and links to subject specific websites and software.
The
Teacher Resource Exchange
http://tre.ngfl.gov.uk
This is an exciting development on the Virtual Teachers
Centre, allowing teachers to exchange ideas about teaching
geography online.
DfES
Standards – schemes of work
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes3/
This site provides schemes of work for National Curriculum
subjects including Geography, ICT and Citizenship, all
of which have relevance to the geography department. The
units of work can be downloaded as Word files for you
to edit and use to devise your own unit plans.
DfES
Standards – Key Stage 3 Strategy
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/keystage3/
This site provides guidance and support materials for
each strand of the National Strategy including TLF and
ICT which will be particularly relevant to geography teachers
in the coming year.
DfES
Guidance for Parents about the National Curriculum at
Key Stage 3
http://www.parentcentre.gov.uk/learnjourn/index_ks3.cfm?ver=graph
This site is very useful if you wish to produce curriculum
guidance for parents about why and how geography is taught
at Key Stage 3.
Education
for sustainable development
http://www.nc.uk.net/esd
This website provides guidance defining what education
for sustainable development is about, with case studies
of ESD in geography.
Local
Authority community grids
Many LEAs have now established their own community grids,
offering online support and opportunities to exchange
ideas with subject teachers throughout the LEA.
Staffordshire
Learning Net
http://www.sln.org.uk/geography/
A particularly impressive website, offering a plethora
of ideas that can be applied in any geography classroom.
South-west
Learning Grid
http://www.swgfl.org.uk/
This site includes an excellent virtual fieldwork trip
along a river in Exmoor including a collection of digital
images as well as data collected at locations along the
river.
Ordnance
Survey
http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk
The Education section of the site includes guidance for
teachers about using maps in the classroom, as well as
an online version of Mapping News. Online guidance is
provided about scales of OS maps, as well as GIS. It is
possible to download the 1:50 000 OS symbols from the
site. The Get-a-Map section allows the user to download
OS map extracts using a place or postcode search facility.
Geographical
Association
http://www.geography.org.uk/
The Association publishes a range of publications which
demonstrate how ICT can be used in geography. Its journal,
Teaching Geography has a regular ICT feature article,
as well as reviews of new software and websites. The GA’s
website provides online support to journal articles, provides
links to useful geography websites, and co-ordinates links
to topical issues each month.
Royal
Geographical Society
http://www.rgs.org/
This site includes some web-based resources in the Education
section, as well as providing the latest news and events
about the society.
• Websites
for Exam Boards in the UK
Assessment
and Qualifications Alliance (AQA)
http://www.aqa.org.uk
Council for the Curriculum, Examinations
and Assessment (CCEA)
http://www.ccea.org.uk/
EdExcel
http://www.edexcel.org.uk
Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations
(OCR)
http://www.ocr.org.uk
Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA)
http://www.sqa.org.uk
Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC)
http://www.wjec.co.uk
• News sites
The
reviews of the news sites below represent some of the
best currently found on the web. The most useful feature
on a news site is a search facility allowing access to
archived news stories. The chances of visiting a news
site and finding useful geography material on a particular
day is unlikely, unless the user is researching a topical
event, the geography teacher or pupil therefore needs
to be able to access stories and features for a period
of time. Some sites include special features or detailed
reports where collection of articles together with external
web links are co-ordinated, the Guardian Unlimited and
BBC News are particularly good examples of this. Some
online newspapers, for instance the Los Angeles Times
charges the user for each article accessed from their
online archive. It is often useful to visit news sites
in different parts of the world, and analysis frequently
conflicting viewpoints and attitudes about events and
issues.
BBC
News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
The ultimate news website, the home page provides front
page news items. Articles include links to related websites.
The In Depth section contains an archive of Special Reports,
similar to those on The Guardian site. At the time of
writing it was possible to access an archive organized
in basic categories for the years 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998.
It is also possible to use a search engine to find articles
for topics. A recent addition is World Development Summit
section to coincide with the Johannesburg conference.
This excellent section includes summaries of key world
issues, together with relevant weblinks, links to relevant
articles, case studies from around the world, and even
an interactive quiz. This alone is a fantastic teaching
resource for geography. The site also includes an Interactive
Guide to Natural Disasters, which provides the user with
an overview of particular recent disasters, before providing
a link to an archive of articles and external links from
the time of the event. The disasters included are Mozambique
Floods, Venezuelan Floods, Orissa Cyclone, Taiwan Earthquake,
Turkish Earthquake, and Hurricane Mitch.
Guardian
Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
The Guardian Unlimited is the main news website from the
Guardian newspaper. As well as the internet edition of
the newspaper, the site provides breaking news throughout
the day, web-exclusive comment from Guardian writers,
a searchable archive, and subject-specific special reports.
There is a tremendous wealth of information, ideas and
links provided on this site. You need to allocate a few
hours to explore its potential, which could revolutionise
the way you teach and learn. It is certainly a site you
will want to visit again and again. The Guardian home
page provides the front page stories of the day. On any
given day there could be a story of geographical relevance
on the front page. Of particular interest, however, is
a link which can be found in the Web Special section,
Interactive Guides. These guides use Macromedia Flash
and provide collections of resources about a variety of
topics and issues, at the time of writing there were over
50 topics in the collection. Many of these have relevance
to geography. These interactive guides include links to
the Special Reports section. This is where you will find
Guardian Unlimited's in-depth guides to issues in the
news. These reports provide collections of articles related
to a topic, as well as excellent collections of external
weblinks.
CNN
News
http://www.cnn.com/
This US news site has many similarities with the BBC news
site including the In Depth section providing collections
of articles, images and web links about specific stories
and issues from around the world, this resource is also
archived. A disadvantage with this site is that rather
a lot of information and links are crammed onto each page.
However, the topic frame on the lefthand side of the page
is useful, the world, weather, and nature sections are
particularly good.
Ultimate
collection of newslinks
http://pppp.net/links/news
This site provides links to over 10000 online newspapers
all over the world. This allows access to the very latest
geographical events from around the world. The user chooses
an area of the world by continent and then selects a specific
country. This will then boot up a webpage directory for
that country with links to further directories of online
newspapers, and numerous other topics. The UK page, for
example, has links to 210 online newspapers. The USA has
a nationwide link, together with pages for each state,
the California page has links to over 200 newspapers.
This site provides an excellent gateway to news, events
and points of view for people all over the world. Obviously
the quality of the newspapers will vary, many will be
in different languages, but the site represents a quick
and easy way to access news sites. Once the user has located
a particularly good news site it would be useful to bookmark
the URL, perhaps creating a news folder to save the link
in.
The
Yahoo news website
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
This pulls together news stories from online sites all
over the world, as well as photographs and links to other
sites, for major world events, these are found in full
coverage sections. These events can be searched on the
site, with the option to search for stories or photographs.
•
Statistical websites
UK
National Statistics
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
This government website provides official statistics for
the UK. The Learning Zone section includes sets of data
with online activities already provided. There is also
a section about the 2001 Census.
GeoHive
http://www.geohive.com/
The site is divided into several parts. There are three
main parts. One dealing with the whole world and its regions,
a second with all major countries separately and a third
with rankings (the most, largest, longest, wealthiest,
etc.). Johan van der Heyden has developed the site as
a hobby. It also includes links to official statistics
sites for countries all around the world.
The
CIA World Factbook
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
This links takes you to the index page which is organised
alphabetically, when you select a country you can access
a wide range of data including a map of the country.
•
Satellite Image Websites
Eduspace
http://www.eduspace.esa.int/eduspace/main.asp?ulang=en
This excellent site provides an introduction to Remote
Sensing, as well as providing a collection of images for
Europe. The site also explains how the technology can
be used to monitor disasters.
NASA’s
Visible Earth site provides a collection of images grouped
in a range of categories
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/
USGS
The Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center
(EDC) Sioux Falls, South Dakota
http://edc.usgs.gov/
Landsat
org, includes a gallery of images from around the world.
http://www.landsat.org/
Earthshots
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/earthshots/slow/tableofcontents
USGS site that provides case studies built around collections
of satellite images showing environmental change.
• Using ICT in
Key Stage 3 Geography
Click
here to open a PDF of the Nelson Thornes guide, Using
ICT in Key Stage 3 Geography. It provides practical
guidelines on using the ICT resources and activities in
the Key Geography series. N.B This will take a few minutes
to download
Key
Geography Newsletters
Autumn
2001.
• New Key Geography Connections Teacher's Resource weblinks
Activity Sheet 1.5
3 Use the information from a variety of sources including information obtained via the internet to compare the forecast for different areas. See, for example, the Met Office website and BBC Weather.
www.met-office.gov.uk
www.bbc.co.uk/weather
Activity Sheet 1.11
2 Find out more about equatorial climate from a variety of sources (Books, CD-ROMs, videos, magazines) including information obtained from the Key Geography website:
Rainforest Action Network
www.ran.org
Activity Sheet 2.9
3 Research Mount Etna on the internet. Volcano World includes a worldwide database. The section on Mount Etna includes photos, satellite images and information about its history.
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/
Activity Sheet 2.18
4 In the USA, the internet is used as a means of helping people to prepare for an earthquake. Why would the development of websites giving advice about preparing for earthquakes be of limited use in countries such as India?
http://www.abag.ca.gov/bayarea/eqmaps/eqmaps/
www.sfgate.com/chronicle/special/quakes/
Activity Sheet 3.16
5 Research additional information about Mallorca using the internet, e.g. City Net home page.
http://www.mallorcaonline.com/malhomu.htm
www.city.net
Activity Sheet 3.18b
8 Research additional information about Disney Florida using the internet, e.g. Walt Disney World home page.
www.disney.com/
Activity Sheet 5.1, 5.12
4 Create a fact file about Italy by using the internet, e.g. the Windows on Italy website. Investigate other internet websites using a search engine.
http://www.windowsonitaly.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy
Activity Sheet 5.2
3 Research information about the European Union by using the internet. Go to the World Factbook website. Investigate other websites using a search engine.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
Activity Sheet 5.20, 6.17
10 Present the level of development for Italy using ICT. For more information, access the United Nations CyberSchoolBus which includes the InfoNation database in the Resource section of the website.
http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/
You could record data researched from the internet to create a spreadsheet, and import your findings into a word-processing file to analyse the results.
Activity Sheet 6.1
5 You can discover more about Mount Fuji by visiting the Mount Fuji live website. Why might the picture on the website be black?
http://live-fuji.jp/fuji/livee.htm
Activity Sheet 6.2
5 Create a fact file about Japan using the World Factbook. Investigate other internet websites about Japan using a search engine.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ja.html
Activity Sheet 6.6a
5 Find out more about the Kobe earthquake by using a search engine on the internet and then browsing through the sites identified. Alternatively you can use the weblinks provided on the Key Geography website:
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/kobe.html
Activity Sheet 6.14a
8 You can find additional information about Japan’s industry, energy issues and environment by using the internet, for example Japan Information, produced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan:
http://www.mofa.go.jp/
Activity Sheet 7.6
6 Use the internet to investigate population growth and development. www.populationconcern.org.uk
Activity Sheet 7.16
5 Use the internet to investigate a case study of a recent aid emergency. Investigate the aims, policies and an example of a scheme, e.g. Oxfam.
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/
• New Key Geography Interactions Teacher's Resource weblinks
Activity Sheet 2.1
2 The National Farmers’ Union is an organisation representing farmers and growers in England and Wales. Find out more about real farms in Britain by visiting the NFU website. See www.nfu.org.uk/.
Activity Sheet 2.3
3 Imagine you are a graphic designer. The National Farmers’ Union has asked you to design a poster to raise awareness of the problems facing farmers in the UK. Find out more about problems facing farmers in Britain by visiting the NFU website. See www.nfu.org.uk/.
Activity Sheet 3.13
e Use the Cambridge Science Park’s jobs web page to identify the type of labour the site is able to attract and how this will benefit new companies locating here. See www.cambridge-science-park.co.uk.
Extension
Go to the Cambridge Science Park’s news page and include two examples of recent developments.
(The Chief Executive Officer demands a lot! Find useful information from the Cambridge Science Park website. See www.cambridge-science-park.co.uk.)
Activity Sheet 4.5
2 Use the internet to locate sites of organisations concerned with endangered species. See www.wwf.org.uk and www.rspb.co.uk. Any useful information could be saved on a disk and later used to design a poster suggesting why it is important to protect elephants.
Activity Sheet 5.7
2 Use the internet to locate websites to do with population distribution. For example, visit www.census.gov.
Activity Sheet 5.9
6 Obtain population data and information about population change in the UK and India from websites for countries and development agencies. For example, www.census.gov or www.un.org. Use this data to produce charts comparing population change in these two countries over the last 50 years.
Activity Sheet 6.1
6 Create a fact file about Kenya using The World Factbook website. See http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html and investigate other relevant internet websites using a search engine.
Activity Sheet 6.11
3 The following statement is a Maasai belief:
‘It takes one day to destroy a house but to build a new one will take months, perhaps years. If we destroy our way of life to construct a new one, it will take thousands of years.’
To help explain the statement, research the way of life of the Maasai by using the internet. See www.maasai-association.org/ www.survival.org.uk
Activity Sheet 6.16
4 Present the level of development for Kenya using ICT. For more information access the United Nations CyberSchoolBus which includes the InfoNation database in the Resource section of the website. See www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/.
Activity Sheet 7.18b
4 Today, 50,000 people will die because of poverty. Men, women and children will suffer through disease, famine and hardship that no one should ever have to endure. Find out what you could do to help, for example by giving ethical gifts. See www.oxfam.org.uk.
Activity Sheet 7.21b
Investigate fair trade further by looking at the Fair Trade website: www.fairtrade.org.uk.
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